When you need medical help, you seek out a medical professional to help you heal or to treat you for whatever is ailing you. Your doctor or nurse will diagnose you, treat you, and create a plan for what you need to get back to full health. Even though they’re highly trained, these medical professionals can make serious mistakes that leave you worse off than you were when you came in for their help.
If a healthcare worker has harmed you and left you with more injuries than before, then you could use the help an El Dorado, AR medical malpractice lawyer. With our legal help, you’ll be able to get justice for the injuries you suffered at the hand of your doctor’s negligence. We’ll determine what caused the mistake and how much you’re owed for your damages so that you can have justice for what happened to you.
Causes of Medical Malpractice in El Dorado
It’s important to note that medical malpractice is not you simply being unsatisfied with your care. If you received care that didn’t satisfy you, but it didn’t harm you and you were treated correctly, then it’s likely you didn’t experience medical malpractice. However, if a doctor was negligent, made a mistake, and it led to you suffering from injuries and damages, then you likely have a med mal claim on your hands.
Your doctor has a duty of care that they owe you. When they break that duty of care and injure you, that’s when they’ve committed medical malpractice. There are specific instances of mistakes that healthcare workers can make that commonly lead to patients suffering from injuries. In El Dorado, Arkansas, and all around the country, these are the medical mistakes that we most see as causes of medical malpractice:
- Misdiagnosis. If a doctor looks at your symptoms and diagnoses you with the wrong disease or ailment, and start treating you for that wrong diagnosis, then that could cause more harm to your body. For example, if your doctor diagnoses you with cancer but you don’t actually have cancer, the surgeries and treatments that you endure for that diagnosis could seriously damage your health.
- Missed Diagnosis. Your doctor could miss an important diagnosis that delays your treatment and creates more health problems for you. For example, if you are having a heart attack and they miss that diagnosis, you could suffer from even more serious side effects from not getting immediate treatment for your heart attack.
- Medication Error. Sometimes a healthcare professional makes a mistake regarding medication. This can give you an allergic reaction, or an adverse reaction, or cause more damage to be done to your body. If they give you the wrong dose, the wrong medication, or administer it the wrong way, then you could have experienced medical malpractice from a medication error.
- Anesthesia Error. A specific medication that can be very harmful when not given in correct doses is anesthesia. There are specific medical professionals in charge of administering anesthesia for you during a procedure, and if they give you too much or too little then you could suffer from physical or emotional trauma.
- Surgical Error. Surgeons can make mistakes in many different steps of the surgery process. Whether they operate on the wrong spot, slip up and make a cut that’s too deep and injures another body part, or leave instruments inside the body after the surgery is over, then they should be held accountable for their actions.
- Poor Documentation. If a nurse, doctor, or another healthcare worker does not take particular, detailed notes and document your treatment, then those errors could lead to a mistake in your care. Something as simple as a day’s missing chart could lead to you being injured in one way or another.
All of these mistakes can cause serious injuries for patients. When you leave a hospital worse than when you entered it, something is wrong. You shouldn’t have to deal with this on your own. One of our El Dorado, AR medical malpractice attorneys is here to guide you through the claims process so that you can get justice for what you’ve been through.
Arkansas Med Mal Statute of Limitations
One of the main factors that your El Dorado attorney will look into is making sure you’re within the statute of limitations to file a claim. If you’ve waited too long, you might not be eligible to take legal action, which would mean you can’t recover anything for your injuries and damages.
In Arkansas, you have two years from the date of your injury to file a claim against the party responsible. However, if there was no way of knowing about your injury and you don’t find out about it until later, your timeline begins when you realize you are injured. This exception usually applies to foreign objects left inside a patient’s body.
When the person who experienced the malpractice was a child, the laws get more complicated. Parents have two years or until the child turns 11 years old to file a claim. If there was a foreign object left in their body or if the injury doesn’t show until later, then the parent has 2 years from the date it was discovered, or until the child turns 19 to file.
If you’re not sure if you’re within the statute of limitations, our El Dorado medical malpractice lawyer can help you determine if you have a claim. This can all be complicated, which is why you can benefit from having an attorney on your side.
McMath Woods P.A. Will Support You
When you trust doctors to take care of you, it can be even harder to process the physical and emotional pain they leave you with when they make a mistake and leave you injured. An experienced El Dorado, AR medical malpractice lawyer from our law firm is here to guide you through the claims process so that you can focus your attention on your healing.
We know that this is a difficult time for you, which is why we’ll take care of everything. Reach out to us today so we can get started working for you.
